I am going to attempt to back away from any of my previous attitude and direction. I’ll pose one basic multi-part ‘question area,’ with associated questions, for delius (I'm not asking you to address every individual question, unless you wish to do so, as long as the answer(s) to the basic ‘question area’ covers the associated questions too):

Basic Question, part 1a: By what process would a person know for themselves, “hear with their own ears,” or in an ‘even handed, fair’ manner, experience an appropriate evaluation of one or more PWB methods or products?

Basic Question, part 1b: If all affects upon the brain, sensory input included, can become psychological stimuli, and if the converse can also be true – one’s psychological state can influence our reception and/or interpretation of input – then how can one determine if the presence or absence of a PWB recommended practice or product as a part of the total psychological experience is having a positive or negative effect upon one’s listening experience apart from so many other variables?

(A small digression that I hope will not detract from the basic question: one might say that audio listening and/or PWB recommendations/products cannot be experienced apart from all other present variables. In this life, can we ever be in a ‘steady state’ such that the affect of one variable can be totally isolated? This is one reason that some seekers of new knowledge tend to rely on test instruments that are, as far as we know, uninfluenced by the psychological state of the person performing the test. However if it is psychological stimuli and/or a psychological result we are ultimately trying to evaluate, how would we be able to tell if one particular stimulus, or group of stimuli, from PWB methods or products is an overall positive influence on a person’s perception of an experience within the total psychological situation being experienced?

I know that there are recommendations, such as the freezing of the two proper photographs, the proper freezing/thawing of CD’s, or certain paper treatments, that can be tried without buying any PWB products, and additionally there may be some free product samples available, but what constitutes a ‘fair’ evaluation? Can I apply one or more recommendations/products within a household unbeknown to other household members and wait for one or more of them to say, “What happened, the audio sounds so much better?” This kind of evaluation seems full of problems in attributing positive change to PWB practices and products.

If I am both the one instituting the changes and the one evaluating the results, am I not setting myself up for the potential influence of ‘the power of suggestion’ or similar effect? Does this matter or not matter to the evaluation?

I guess I’m asking for an ‘evaluation method’ that some group of us could actually accept as a reasonable test, even for those who are either skeptics or critics.)

Basic Question, part 2: If there is no reasonable way, acceptable to a group, to evaluate the potential results, then can there be a reasonable way for that group to attribute positive change to the instituting of PWB methods and products?

There are several individuals outside of this forum who attribute positive results to PWB methods, and there are several individuals who report no positive results. If we only continue to add individual, contrary voices to the pool of opinions, then can any summary conclusion regarding the effects of PWB methods with regard to audio be reached?

[Edit: spelling correction.]